Penguins A to Z: Justin Schultz's departure looms

While the NHL is on hold because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Tribune-Review will offer Penguins A to Z, a player-by-player look at all 54 individuals under NHL contract with the organization, from mid-level prospect Niclas Almari to high-profile trade acquisition Jason Zucker.

Player: Justin Schultz

Position: Defenseman

Shoots: Right

Age: 29

Height: 6-foot-2

Weight: 193 pounds

2019-20 NHL statistics: 46 games, 12 points (three goals, nine assists)

Contract: Final year of a three-year contract with a salary cap hit of $5.5 million. Pending unrestricted free agent this upcoming offseason.

Acquired: Trade, Feb. 26, 2016

This season: You might have heard this story before.

A young, talented defenseman is in the Edmonton Oilers’ system. He has tons of skill and a valued right-handed shot. But he doesn’t find his place in the woebegone graveyard that is the Oilers’ blue line.

So he gets traded to the Penguins, and his game just blossoms.

Justin Schultz? Sure. But we’re talking about John Marino.

The Penguins acquired Marino in a trade from the Oilers last offseason with hopes he could make the NHL roster. As it turns out, he has essentially become the replacement for Schultz, even before Schultz is gone.

The combination of Marino’s ascension and Schultz simply having a rotten season as he approaches unrestricted free agency have led to an inevitable conclusion to Schultz’s otherwise satisfactory tenure with the Penguins.

When they acquired him in the winter of 2016, they simply were trying to fill out their blue line with a skilled defenseman who had lost his way. Since then, they’ve rebuilt his game and for a while, he might have been the NHL’s best No. 3 defenseman.

So it figured the two-time Stanley Cup champion could cash in during a contract year. Instead, injuries have wrecked what ideally should have been a productive season for him.

In November and December, he missed seven games because of an undisclosed injury. Six games after his return, he suffered a knee injury and was sidelined for 16 games in late December and most of January.

By the time he returned to the lineup, Marino virtually was entrenched on the second pairing, and Schultz was relegated to the third pair.

One of the few positives for Schultz this season came towards the end of the regular season. By the time the NHL halted play in mid-March, Schultz regularly was being deployed on the top power-play unit instead of Kris Letang.

One of the relatively few triumphs in Schultz’s sub-par season came in the Penguins’ final regular-season game, a 5-2 road win against the New Jersey Devils, when Schultz scored his first goal in nearly four months:

(Video courtesy NHL)

The future: Should the NHL season resume this summer, Schultz figures to man the third pair along with Jack Johnson. As for the power play, if nothing else, he’ll definitely be a candidate to work the first unit.

Going into the offseason, the only thing certain about Schultz is he will sign with another team. General manager Jim Rutherford has suggested Marino and Marcus Pettersson could be part of the team for a decade or more. And with the team facing a potential salary cap crunch because of the hiatus (as well as the pending restricted free agent status of goaltender Matt Murray, Tristan Jarry and others), the Penguins simply must cut ties with Schultz.

It’ll be interesting to see how much he can fetch on the free agent market. Under normal circumstances, a right-handed defenseman with his resume would fetch a lucrative contract. But give the unique nature of this pause and its presumed impact on the league’s finances, Schultz could not have picked a worse time to become an unrestricted free agent.

Follow the Penguins all season long.